Optimization of providing services to devices in a network in a simplistic manner without compromising security has become increasingly important. “Service-aware” networks provide service availability across the network and control access to these services based on a user's context, identity, location, application, and user's device in use. Standard mDNS based service discovery is a layer-2 discovery protocol which is not routable across virtual local area networks (VLANs), and is therefore not practical for discovery and advertisement of services in large enterprise networks.
Clients using a device such as a mobile device to query large enterprise networks for services can be overwhelmed by received service provider details that might not be of much use or relevance to the client based on the client's current physical location even though the reported services are limited to those on the querying client's VLAN.